Its leading
function should be to delight its house's inmates (and intimates) in
things of nature so refined as to inspire and satisfy their happiest
moods. Therefore no garden should cost, nor look as if it cost, an
outlay of money, time or toil that cramps the house's own ability to
minister to the genuine bodily needs and spiritual enlargements of its
indwellers; and therefore, also, it should never seem to cost, in its
first making or in its daily keeping, so much pains as to lack, itself,
a garden's supreme essential--tranquillity.
So, then, to those who would incite whole streets of American towns to
become florally beautiful, "formal" gardening seems hardly the sort to
recommend. About the palatial dwellings of men of princely revenue it
may be enchanting. There it appears quite in place. For with all its
exquisite artificiality it still is nearer to nature than the stately
edifice it surrounds and adorns. But for any less costly homes it costs
too much. It is expensive in its first outlay and it demands constantly
the greatest care and the highest skill. Our ordinary American life is
too busy for it unless the ground is quite handed over to the hired
professional and openly betrays itself as that very unsatisfying
thing, a "gardener's garden."
[Illustration: " ... until the house itself seems as naturally .
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